Riches vs Wealth and Becoming an Online Entrepreneur

People keep asking me if you can get rich with internet marketing and if so, how. I always want to know if they really want to be rich or if they’d rather be wealthy before I answer the question. It tells me how that person’s mind works. I don’t like to answer questions like that until I know how the other persons mind works. Little tic I have.

Anyone who hears what rich is, vs. wealthy, and still, after thinking about it, wants to be rich instead of wealthy will end up broke and hate this business.

A wealthy person can wake up in the morning and decide whether they want to work or not. A rich person may have a lot of money in the back, but they HAVE to work, whether they want to or not. A surgeon can be rich and not wealthy.

The best definition of wealth I ever heard was measured by the number of days you could sustain a comfortable lifestyle on the money you have. I currently have 180 days of wealth. When my three deals are signed, I can probably take three years off – at my current lifestyle, not in poverty. I won’t, but I could.

How many days would you like to be able to do whatever you wanted to do, follow your whims, and still feed yourself/your family?

Rich is an amount of money. Wealth is a quality of lifestyle, of freedom that happens to include money. My first year in Internet Marketing I netted about $50,000. I could have made that in a regular job, true.

But I could work whenever I wanted.

I could (and did) take my laptop out on the lawn to work in the sun for an hour or so each day.

At any time I could (and did) take a road trip without knowing where I was going to end up. I went to the movies on Tuesday afternoons. I shopped for groceries when the store was empty.

Being rich just means you have more money than most people. If you make more than $100K in a year, you’re among the top 6% of earners.

In the world.

That’s great. But is it worth it if half of your money goes to income tax and you work 100 hours a week?

Being wealthy is having an income, whether it’s from a business or investments, that supports your lifestyle comfortably and can run without your constant input.

—->sidebar<— Big mistake I made in building my business – for a while there I was the special sauce. You can’t sell the rights to the Big Mac if you aren’t going to include the special sauce. It’s part of the formula.

You could make $40K a year and be wealthy.

If you’re getting into internet marketing expecting that this time next year you’ll have x amount of money, it doesn’t work that way. Sometimes the money will come in bursts – $10,000 in a day, then a couple of hundred a week for a couple of months. Some of that you’ll have to reinvest into your business. There’s hosting fees, and other services you’ll need, the cost of connecting to the internet, advertising…

After a year of hard work, maybe you’ll get to quit your job… and perhaps not.

But if you can be happy with the perks of wealth before the riches come, you’ll enjoy being a long-term internet marketer. Whatever hassles you run into will be worth the payoff.

Note: This post has been selected for a The Start-Up SparkCarnival of Entrepreneurs, the second carnival this site has been selected to participate in. It’s an honor to be chosen, and for such a new site. I invite you to browse the carnival to see a lot great posts.